MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

5/16 Garza’s yips

Matt Garza had no problems throwing the ball over the plate. Throwing it to first was a little tricky. The Phillies’ Juan Pierre bunted on Garza in the first and he bounced the throw to first baseman Bryan LaHair for an error. Pierre bunted again in the third, and Garza again bounced the ball to LaHair.

“The first one, I had no time,” Garza said. “[Pierre] was out of the box I think before I even released the ball so I just picked it up and flipped it over as quick as I could.

“The second one, I get up and I’m about to throw it, and [Geovany Soto] tells me, ‘Don’t throw it, don’t throw it,’ and I was like, ‘I’m already going forward,'” Garza said. “Right there, if you’re thinking about ‘don’t throw it’ and you’re going, you’re not going to throw it where it needs to go.”

Soto checked on Garza after the play but the pitcher was fine.

“I said, ‘That was hilarious,'” Garza said. “I said, ‘You tell me ‘don’t throw’ and I’m already going through the motions.’ It’s not a big thing. I’ll keep going. If all teams are going to do is bunt against me, we’re going to have some quick games. I’m not too worried about that. They’ll have to hit a single to score.”

Dale Sveum was asked if Garza’s yips were more of a mental problem than physical.

Garza had better get this issue corrected pronto, or teams in the future will do nothing but bunt when he is on the hill. In fact, I was astonished that more Phillie batters did not do just that last evening. It is a mental block, no question. That was an astute comment by Sveum. He`s not a psychologist. What Sveum did not say, but I will: perhaps Matt needs a specialist to overcome this issue.

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